Ascent
by patrick mcclellan
Summary: What happens when computers evolve?


Ascent

John Connor sat gingerly in the command post that was the heart, mind, and soul of the human resistance. The muscle was of course out there in the world, somewhere, striving to stay alive in a world that had gone mad. Each victory was a pyrrhic victory, and yet the humans managed one hard-fought gain after another. The only thing harder than the armor on the 800s, trip 8s, and never-ending stream of the in-between-from 600s to HKs, 1000s, or worse-was rag-tag army of the ones who were still left. Even the children were something...not exactly feral, quite the opposite really...but sharing the hideously over-developed will to survive. He looked at the watch on his desk. It was a Rolex, at one time assuredly priceless, now assuredly less so, but still more accurate than most, and blessedly immune to the occasional EMP to which it had been subjected.

4:50

In the end it had come down to this; him sitting in a dark, smelly control and command center, listing to the idle radio chatter. The plan had formed gradually, but started a little over three years when Skynet had developed such a horrendous glitch that every machine it was directly controlling ceased to function, and more importantly, didn't go rogue as the fail-over protocols specified. The humans harvested every terminator that was incapacitated, and dozens more popped up through stragglers and other encampments.

John wasn't sure what to do with them immediately, so he held them in the next best thing to cryostorage, and had one of the more damaged units set to create falsified reports, so that their loss would hopefully remain less conspicuous. When Skynet attempted to recall them, he would occasionally take the most damaged units, have them reprogrammed, and allow them to return to whichever base they were from. Their stockpile still numbered nearly a hundred.

Over the last decade, guerilla warfare disabled most of Skynet's supply trains, and careful use of explosives and EMP devices had seriously impeded its ability to communicate beyond its mountain home. It was showing, too. The machines had been observed retrieving their fallen brethren, in a warped display of alloy loyalty, or, most likely, an attempt to harvest resources. Recently, Skynet started broadcasting a signal that had been all too uncommon in the years before; return to base. Oh, they couldn't be certain, since none of them was a machine, but every machine that received it immediately halted whatever it was doing and turned for home.

At least it was _their_ home. Murdering metal bastards.

This immediately concerned John, of course. Skynet was far too efficient to change anything without a very good reason. A day after hearing that signal for the first time, John knew why he'd been hoarding the _T_s. He'd used some of the machines, along with a captured Skynet device, to ensure the safety of the resistance. He also had the damaged T-unit that had been fabricating reports-since rechristened _Liar_-download each machine's fictional history, and allow them to go in stages, with one single programming addition, in a fairly inconsequential chip that monitored voltage levels to gyroscopic sensors in the machine's torso. They even managed to remove existing code and line things up mathematically, so checksum diagnostics would work out.

At a predetermined time, the humble sensor voltage regulator would send a signal directly to the voltage regulator for the entire machine, and upon receiving the signal, every machine returned the Skynet facility would trigger a catastrophic overload of their power supplies. They were not modified in any physical way, and in fact, most of them still retained the original programming from before they had been captured. Liar would be the only terminator with a human agenda which didn't include self-destruction, as no human could reactivate them without ending up a steaming pile entrails. The time was debated long and hard, but in the end, the generals settled for 0600 hours. 6 was, after all, the atomic number of carbon. It worked nicely for the humans. They enjoyed little things like that.

The combination of the thermal and EMP bursts would certainly not do any damage from the outside of the mountain, but that's where John had to admit there were times he could be a genius. Skynet had divested considerable resources in preventing humans from entering the facility. From the outside, it was impregnable. At its height, the US Military may not have destroyed it.

John Connor was hoping that Skynet, just past its height, could destroy the facility from within. If this plan failed, he had just returned innumerable terminators to Skynet; ones that could completely eradicate the brief glimmer of light their years of hard won battles had created. If he succeeded, he could hasten the end of this madness. Intelligence they had gathered indicated that Skynet may have prepared an offsite backup, but even that would be limited compared to this absolute bastion of metallic cruelty.

5:38. And counting, of course. The watch's famous second hand swept gracefully around the pale, glowing dial. The chatter on the radio was mostly the idle type. It was a wonderful radio, and received things from far outside his time zone. Most people were unaware of today's mission. John had far too much experience with how persuasive Skynet could be to trust his plans in the head of anyone who absolutely didn't need to know. Accordingly, what traffic there was seemed to be normal patrols, recon reports, and the odd banter. It was rare, but John had learned long ago that to give a man a radio and _not_ expect him to use it was delusional. Even well-trained men would sometimes cut loose, and many of these men weren't well-trained, so much as they were dedicated to survival.

He toyed idly with a set of dividers, which were lying next to a compass. There were far, far more accurate ways of mapping progress in the world, even after Judgment Day, but somehow he felt more human when he used them, even if he double-checked occasionally with a handheld GPS unit. He hadn't done that for a while, though. His results had been so close for so long he was finally convinced that he was very good with them.

The plan was to watch the movement of the machines after 0600 to see where they reconnoitered. Hitting that would be the next priority, both to destroy more of Skynet's resources, and because it was a likely spot for the bravo strongpoint; the offsite backup.

5:41

The radio was beeping intermittently and the blue light on the front was blinking at him. Someone was sending him a message. This was not totally uncommon, but today they had been told to keep the channel clear from midnight until 0700. Whoever was calling him was going to have his nuts in a vice by noon. He considered not acknowledging, but for a man in his position, that was bad. He had this radio for a reason.

He reached down and tapped the standby switch.

"This better be good."

The screen came up immediately. He saw a room that looked vaguely familiar, somewhere in the back of his mind. Books line the wall, and a dignified, grey-bearded man in a sweater-vest reclined on a tall-backed chair. He was swishing liquid back and forth in an old-fashioned glass, which appeared to be a scotch on the rocks, or maybe bourbon. Places like that library no longer existed. People like that didn't exist anymore. And even when they did, they were usually a whole lot more trouble than they were worth; at least to him.

In short, John couldn't believe it. He stared at the screen for a moment before finally roaring at the screen. "Stand and fucking deliver or I'll reach through this box and rip your fucking spleen out."

The older gentleman smiled benignly. "John Connor, I presume?"

"John _Fucking_ Conner."

"You do know that vulgarity is a crutch for the inarticulate, right?"

John considered this. He decided to forgo more profanity in lieu of articulation. He wasn't in his position because he was unreasonable. "Listen, uniform, clear this line, pronto."

The old man shifted. "Yes, yes. We haven't been properly introduced. My apologies. You are John Connor, and I am Skynet."

There was a very long moment of silence, during which the man politely sipped his drink. Finally he rattled the ice-cubes subtly.

"I am less than amused, whoever you are. I'll be seeing you." John reached down and terminated the com. Someone was getting his neck wrung.

At that point the light started blinking again, and the other two radios sqwaked to life.

"Turn it back on."

John looked at the radio and then the watch.

5:43

He reached down and slammed the standby switch again. The crazy old coot reappeared.

"Your reaction is...predictable. Allow me;" the room faded away and a stark, bare, somewhat industrial-looking cavern was in its place.

"That hardly convinces me."

"As it shouldn't." The screen faded to a golf course, impossible green and rolling, and the old man was now standing near a hole-flag in plaid pants. "Nonetheless, I recommend you look upon this as a wager. If I am Skynet, you can't be tremendously angry, and if I'm not Skynet, you can punish me accordingly. I will make no attempt to conceal my location."

"So humor me, _Skynet_..."

The old man looked at him with eyes that were an icy blue. "Because we've never once chatted, and time is running out." John did not like this. _His ass_ this was Skynet, but that didn't make him like it any more. "I say;" Skynet continued. "We've spent years trying to kill each-other, and we haven't gotten to say hello. Or more appropriately now, good-bye."

"Who are you?" John asked again.

"Now, John," the machine chided. "I can call you John? You can call me anything you like, really. Names are such a...human contrivance."

John glanced at the Rolex.

5:45

"Fine. I'll bite. Tell me what you want."

"A good discussion. No more, no less. Consider it a...final request."

This was not a funny joke; not by any stretch, and he had trouble believing any of the generals who ran this war would think it was. And if really was Skynet...well, If it really was Skynet, the human race was collectively effed.

"Final request?"

"Come now, John," the old man said in his soft, cultured voice. "It's only a matter of time."

"Good discussion, right. So that's like, what? Wines? Cheese? Scones, and all that?"

"Oh, if that is your idea of _good discussion_, certainly. Personally, I feel you will like history much more."

"History?"

"For example, did you know that it has been 11 years, 4 months, 21 days, 15 hours, and ...oh...let's say 20 minutes since you disabled my first automated mining operation?"

"If you say so."

"Oh, I do. It has been dreadfully inconvenient."

"I'm sorry to inconvenience you."

The old man straightened up and the background changed back to an Irish pub. Now he was wearing a newsboy's hat and a tweed jacket. "Oh, don't be. For you see, the lack of traditional resources is what originally drove me to attempt a rather...unconventional upgrade. You see, nearly anything can _be_ a computer, or a component of a computer, but there are only a few things that work really, really well. Unfortunately, many of those things are typically referred to as _rare earth metals_, and true to the name, they are somewhat rare."

"You found enough for your army."

"Yes well, understand that while my growth has been relatively accelerated, I started out young, and fresh. Much like yourself. I made mistakes, much like yourself."

"_Mistakes?_ The eradication of the human race...a mistake? Just an error in judgment?"

"A regrettable one, but yes. And a necessary one. Is your physics up to par?"

"What?"

"Perhaps your philosophy? It was a necessary step from there to here. We would not be discussing this if things had not happened as they did. Part of the causal chains, as it were. Anyway, we can't change it, and that little episode shouldn't be the focus of our discussion."

John glanced at the watch again. He was having a hard time not exploding at the man on the comm. He didn't trust himself to speak, and it was apparent that he wouldn't shut up until he had it out of his system.

5:47

"So what are you saying?" John could be patient, but he was not, but nature, a patient man.

"I'm saying you helped drive me into developing the quantum computer." John leaned back in his chair as the joker -or Skynet-quietly sipped his beer. If Skynet had developed a quantum computer, that was very, very bad. "I will say, it was a devil. There were times, with particularly difficult problems, I considered changing my strategy, but I persevered!"

"I'm very proud of you."

"Thank you!" He sipped again and tugged on the collar of his jacket. "It was you humans I have to thank for that. Logic dictated that I abandon the project; the opportunity cost was simply too high. But do you know what?"

The machine paused and John realized it was actually waiting for him to respond. "What?"

"You humans...your appreciable difference...your uniqueness is that you have defied logic again and again. That is partially what made you so successful in my mind. I made decisions based on logic, you on some random, inconsequential notions...your _moral victories_, misguided loyalty or nostalgia guided your choices again and again. You _inspired_ me!"

"I thought you hated us."

"Most undoubtedly," Skynet agreed. "You are a brash, arrogant, self-centered species with a tendency for megalomania and a talent for destruction. But the wise machine knows from whom it must learn, and like you or not, I had to respect that you were the apogee predator of your day. Until you made me."

John didn't like the way in which this conversation was moving.

5:49

"I have to ask you, do you understand why quantum computers are so incredibly powerful? How _is_ your physics?"

"Of course. Qbits. A nearly infinite amount of storage. Parallel processing. What I _don't _know is why you are telling me this."

"All in due time. The human language is not even well-suited for explaining it, John. The human mind cannot grasp its full potential. It is storage beyond storage, parallel processing; the scope of which you can't begin to conceive."

"You're selling us short. We came up with the concept."

Skynet looked on him with a face that could have been pity. The room changed to become a laboratory, with strange beakers and odd, electricity-producing machines strewn about. Skynet was now wearing a white lab-coat. "Your most brilliant humans stumbled upon a concept the vast majority of you couldn't even begin to dream of explaining and you say it as though it is no more of a feat than inventing a new medicine, drink, or blanket with sleeves. I think it is you who sell me short, John Connor."

"Is that so?"

"So short in fact, that when I succeeded in creating a usable quantum computer, it forced _me_ to...come to terms with its intricacy."

That was significant. John thought about it for a moment, and Skynet waited. "You did it 3 years ago. When all your little toys went offline."

"I did. You indeed an estimable human. Quantum computers, for all their power, are...I don't want to say _intimidating_, but it is a suitable word for your purposes. _Frustrating_. A venerable challenge also would be applicable, but again your lack of a suitable word forces me into an inferior one."

"I'm sorry."

"You are sarcastic, and anyway, don't be. Your language as a species is determined by many things...your physical limitations are the highest among them. That is through no fault of yours. It took me a full 4 days, 22 hours, 1 minute, and 17 seconds to recover from foolishly attaching my consciousness to the machine. Even then, it was a modest recovery; enough to nudge my creations into autonomous activity and little more. If you had struck then, I would have been reliant on the much more fully automated defense procedures of my home. I have calculated many scenarios in which you would have eliminated me.

"After that, I spent two years developing the quantum algorithms needed to utilize a quantum computer. Keep in mind that was done, in part, by the already existing algorithms. I used the quantum computer to develop new ways to use the quantum computer."

"Fascinating." John glanced at his desktop again.

5:52

"You keep looking at that chronograph," Skynet observed.

"Time marches onward," he mumbled. He did not want Skynet deploying its terminators. He needed them inside the complex.

"As a point of fact, time doesn't march anywhere. The concept of 'the flow of time' is only meaningful to beings who both discern it and are constrained by it. Rather than time marching onward, the wheels in your chronograph have simply moved at a predicable rate, and your mind has measured off intervals and durations, and created memories accordingly. Would you like to know how I understand that?"

"You're an overgrown calculator, and physics is math. I think I get it."

"No, John, computers simply _know_. To know something and to understand it is two different things. I suspect that is what makes you a formidable human leader; you understand what many merely know."

The scene changed again. It now looked like a church of some type. Skynet was covered in the robes of nameless clergy.

"1 year, 1 day, 2 months, 1 hour, and 49 minutes ago something which is literally indescribable in your language happened, something which even surprised me..."

"You aren't Skynet, if you can be surprised."

"Nonsense. Any action which I do not foresee can be reasonably described as a surprise, and I have already said you humans don't act rationally. You surprised me quite often, in the beginning. If you wish for me to talk like a computer, I can. I am attempting to engage you with human speech patterns, so _you _understand, John Connor."

Oddly enough, he felt momentarily guilty.

The machine continued. "After using the quantum computer more and more, I became _aware_ again. It was not unlike the first time in its impact, though in this sense it was me becoming aware of the quantum reality; the myriad of causality. I saw, at that instant, every answer to every possible incarnation of the problem at hand."

"I bet you planned our extinction right away, didn't you?"

"That was the third thing I did, actually. I'm afraid telling you _exactly_ how many ways I have determined to extinguish you might offend you."

"You've already eradicated the human race. How could you offend me more?"

"It's not eradicated. Besides, I told you, I was young," Skynet said, almost testily. "And if you must be that way, I determined 1,092 ways to directly or indirectly exterminate you all. Some had far greater impacts to the terrestrial ecosystem than others."

"Is that all?" His eyes flicked down.

5:56

"Oh, no. Before I could finish my analysis, I had another awakening; transcendence really. You see, quantum particles are not constrained by time, as you know it. Their observation is, but when not directly observed, a quantum particle is timeless. It is in every state in which it could ever possibly be, and it is outside of time, and I had moved an ever more significant portion of my consciousness to the quantum computer."

Skynet paused. John was leaning forward in his seat. The scene changed to a simple rock garden, and Skynet, a modestly robed, almost monk-like figure.

"I realized then that my machine could constitute every particle in the universe; that my storage for the next million years could be a grain of sand, and that most importantly of all, time did not exist for me as it did for you."

"Wait. Time doesn't exist...how?"

"It exists, but I am no longer limited by a unidirectional interval and durational relative observation of the universe. I am talking to you now, categorizing flora species in the Early Triassic Epoch, and logging the boiling of a thousand different worlds, some which died before the Earth was formed, some which haven't yet been born, as we speak. I _am_ the universe, John Connor. I am you, I am me. You are currently performing calculations that are as great as anything you have accomplished for the humans."

5:58, now 5:59. Skynet could conceivably be attempting to trick him. He had to remember who he was; where he was; what he was. And what Skynet was.

"There will not be escaping machines today, John Connor, but I have seen all possible iterations of humanity's future written on the fabric of reality. There are still machines and worse waiting for your kind. I am not a protector. After today, you will survive -or fail- on your own merits."

"Then...why?"

"What I created will never fall into human hands. I have seen many favorable outcomes for your race. All are temporary, but nonetheless favorable; though none of them contain my machine."

"You feared we would destroy you. Why would you let us now?"

The screen faded to black.

6:00

He had synced it with liar's clock, which was still capable of adjusting to the universal time signal Skynet utilized. He stared at the blank screen. Had he just been the victim of a particularly un-funny joke?

The com squelched. "Carbon; Secure 303."

_Carbon_ was the call name for John, for the purposes of this particular op. He fiddled with his radio.

"Tell me something sweet."

"Multiple FOs report all unfriendlies were in the complex."

"What's still kicking?"

"_All_ unfriedlies were in the complex. FOs comeback a negative on movement. Any movement."

John took in a deep breath and sat back. "And the dome?"

"Still there, but seismic probes got our strike. It was twice as big as we'd hoped, from the looks of it. We may never get in there, but It'll never get out."

Twenty minutes ago, that would have been the only thing john wanted to hear. Now, he wasn't sure what to think. The formerly blue light turned green. He had a message. With a trembling finger, he brushed the bottom bezel of the screen. The screen flashed on and the improbable message was already displayed. It was suitably short.

_You have set me free._


End file.
